I just couldn't help it...

Relative reflectivity...

Most of Ceres is VERY low reflectivity stuff. These two spots are reflecting 40% of incoming light. It looks like SO much more because they are vastly overexposing the dark-stuff to bring up some detail. The reflectivity of these spots is about the same as an iceberg (in Earth terms).

They will go much farther with this unusual contrast photography with New Horizons, in the coming months.

Having 50 goverments and a federal government, too...

It isn't easy to deal with 50 state governments, with their contradictory approaches to issues. Surprising things are legal in some states (Colorado Cannabis anyone?) and 10 years of jail in others. I am not long term fan of Google (at all), but doing business in all 50 states is very tricky.

Google didn't shut this guy down, they just closed of an avenue of prosecution. It really wouldn't be hard for him to attempt another perspective, but he might risk 'summary judgement' where MS ends up paying Google's legal expenses to defend the perspective.

In the American Legal System, virtually ANYTHING can be run in Civil courts, if all you want is money.

Hot fire test failure...

It is good that SpaceX does this test. Not so good that there are problems with the results. With Orbital now turning over some launches to ULA Titan, this commercial launching shows that this is not yet an activity to take-for-granted.

USA running the Internet...

There is nothing preventing others from doing their own services deployment and connecting it to the Internet. There is a lot of evidence that indicates that it is often done. If you follow protocol, no one will notice AND you can inter route packets.

Isn't it GREAT that so much will be known...

PLUTO is far from unique...

The issue is that there are MANY bodies expected in orbits like Pluto's. It has a 3:2 ratio of orbital period with Neptune and waggles 17degrees away from the ecliptic. Many others have already been found (Makemake, Vatuna, Quaoar, etc.) that will never collide with Pluto and can coexist indefinitely because of orbital resonances/inclinations.

Pluto was found WAAAY earlier, but it appears to be an example of a class of objects in that general area past Neptune (Kuiper Belt).

Orion and the ISS...

@bleu, Orion was never scrapped (hence, your word 'nearly'), but its Constellation-project SRB-based rocket system was formally scrapped after the Ares I-x test flight in late October 2009. The Ares V was formally scrapped at the same time.

The direction was changed to focus on commercial vehicles to the ISS.

From that point forward, Lockheed's Orion was for deepspace-only. Boeing presented CST-100 to function at a lower price (and hold more people) than Orion.

Competing with Soyuz...

Remember that CST-100 and Dragon compete with Soyuz, not Orion. The Orion specification is to protect astronauts for many MONTHS outside the Van Allen Belts. Soyuz would need to transfer its load to a more-heavily shielded transit device for the bulk of the trip.

NASA would add the ESA Thales ATV-adaptation plus a Bigelow unit for the longer Martian trip. They are researching keeping most/all of the astronauts 'asleep' for the trip, to minimize the need for highly shielded transport.

NASA is about Basic Research...

NASA's job is to enable basic research on not-yet-commercializable technology areas. The pursuit of commercial space is a key benefit of that research. Even the commercial companies benefited from access to NASA's research (Merlin clearly derived from Fastrac, for example).

There is no commercial model for deepspace manned transfer yet. NASA clearly does not believe that simply adding existing shielding to Dragon or CST-100 will make them into an Orion. We will see.

NASA does need to compete with ESA, RSA, JSA and CSA, as part of the technology-race that is always happening...

Boeing is looking at alternatives for Atlas...

Boeing is advising that BE-4 KeraLOX and other engines can be adapted to a new rocket. They are looking at 5 years before it clears all testing. There is NOTHING stopping Boeing from requesting Falcon 9s for their work, though.

The Atlas Vs used in the proposal are about $100 Mn per launch (plus other payload and capsule). Falcon 9s are supposed to be available for under $70 Mn per launch.

Astronaut training, recovery and flight operations are all on the commercial vendor, and in their proposal.

Price matters

Russian engines on Atlas...

Clearly, having a backlog of 2 years-of-engines within the USA is part of a plan to sustain launches with short-term-stoppages of deliveries. Boeing is working on 'Atlas 6', with some more details by October 1.

Atlas is a brand, not a technology..

Atlas V is a substantially different config than 'earlier' Atlas rockets. It was built to use twin-RD-180 engines for moderate-heavy payloads. Its ancestry is clearly to RD-170 not any American Engine.

Agena had a hydrazine engine, not KeraLOX. There is NO way that RD-180 is similar to Agena.

Delta IV won't be man-rated anytime soon...

NASA has many standards in the post SS activity. Deltas, with their continuous refueling requirement, just won't get there. The new standard is KeraLOX-friendly. Expect CST-100 to go up on RD-180 with a backup plan for Falcon 9. I agree with earlier posts that advise that all of these launchers use a standardized control approach, so that CST-100 and Dragon 2 would be adaptable to any other approved rocket-system.

ULA cannot change their rockets. Boeing and Lockheed would have to do this on their own. CST-100 is a Boeing (not ULA) system.

Re: Of course, had we not abandoned the Apollo project...

The problem with settlements on Luna is that no one has built 'self sustaining settlements' models. Several have tried, but the 14-day 'sun is up' followed by the 14-day 'sun is down' diurnal-cycle has been problematic. It creates very large temperature swings.

Does Google glass put out fires?

This is not EASY stuff...

Governments are correctly taken-to-task for abuse of people, even when they are attempting to protect some people from other people. The Japanese Internment of 100,000 people in four US states during WWII is one example. Kipling's "White Man's Burden" was a rallying cry at the dawn of the 20th century, is horribly condescending now.

The criticism for the actions is just. A lot of important, valuable gains have been made from actions that would be horrible to do today.

Re: Another product ruined by CA

I don't think that Arcserve surged its marketshare after purchase. It was retracked as a security-oriented suite of data protection products. The visionaries from Cheyenne departed a year before the CA acquisition. As I recall, the network bandwidth was a severe constriction for Arcserve with the then-largest setups. CA was investigating hardware solutions (Fibrechannel, etc.) to help make the backup/recovery aspect more viable.

Arcserve in the mid-1990s...

I worked for CA when they acquired Arcserve. At the time, they had the best 'Enterprise Backup' operational software, especially if you had NetWare fileshares. We had a fat-laptop with a SCSI tape that we used to demonstrate function at user sites. That is NOT to say that it worked perfectly.

I still am not pleased with the bullet-proof measures in common Enterprise Backup systems. We rarely get 100% correct backup on any given night. We have tried 5 vendors in 12 years. I think that most datacenters underallocate staff to maintain the various mechanisms of Enterprise Backup.

This could get the ESA rolling...

Oracle is sometimes inflexible on privacy...

In the USA, there are 'HIPAA' privacy rules, particularly surrounding healthcare information. The big prosecutors in the USA have been quite active prosecuting violations of 'protected health information'.

Caregivers don't want to pay for violations done by their business-partners, so they get agreements from partners to pay the fines IF the partner is the cause.

In my state, Caregivers are sharing that Oracle is not signing such agreements. This is making it easier to choose vendors (or transition to vendors) that sign these agreements.

It is not good for Oracle growth in the Caregiver sector of the economy.

Background radiation...

Martian landings...

NASA is trying to get a more-general capability for Mars landings, particularly with heavier payloads and higher martian-altitude landing sites.

Using rockets all the way down would require a substantial fuel supply for those long burns, there is enough atmosphere on Mars to cause the burns to start early and run for a long time.

Using parachutes all the way down leaves a lot of energy to be dissipated by short-burn rockets or rockets+bags. This is acute for higher-altitude landings and/or massive probe landings.

Both Viking and MSL were just under 1 ton. With larger loads, this kind of hybrid air-friction tool saves precious weight on fuel and large landing rockets. It will be cool on probes anticipated for 2020 and beyond.